Bystander
by Angelfirenze
Summary: She could understand, really, why Greg came to prefer being ignored. Sequel to 'Bottleneck', 'Diversion', and 'Casualty'. Fourth in the 'Without a Name' series.


**Bystander**  
_By Angelfirenze_

**Disclaimer:** Plot? Check. Characters? *feels around in pockets* ...Uh...um...yeah, no. The title comes from a comment **JuliaBohemian** made on the idea we've written about. Lyrics from Nine Inch Nails, Death Cab for Cutie, Bad Religion, and Incubus.

**Summary:** She could understand, really, why Greg came to prefer being ignored.

**Notes:** The tenderness between Hector and Monique Life is Funny by E.R. Frank inspires my idea of John trying to deal with Blythe's own uncharacteristic behavior with some of his own. Sequel to Bottleneck, Diversion, and Casualty. AU as of the airing of 'Birthmarks'.

Also, my usual personal canon for House doesn't figure into anything anymore so I'm starting a new path. Thanks for that, writers! *rolls eyes*

_I don't give half a hump if you're innocent or not! So where does that put you? - Shepherd Derrial Book; 'Objects in Space', Firefly_

Sometimes, when she closes her eyes, she can still feel his hands on her. Gunnery Sergeant -- now Full Bird Colonel Philip Landry -- had been one of John's mentors at one point in their lives. His angular face had haunted her through a tableau of mismatched scenes, her son's face or his superimposed into the background of various snatches of scenery -- Greg's haunted expression glaring up from his senior high school yearbook photo...

Moments when, months -- years afterward, she still had nightmares -- still cringed when John touched her, going from amiable to sobbing incoherently in the space of a second. She'd raged, screamed, hitting his chest and arms, screaming out all the terror and wished-for vindication at the one target she had. But John would wrap his arms around her, hugging her firmly as she tried to head butt him, scratch him, kick, slash, and punch. He was always patient, always forgiving -- even when he'd needed to go to the infirmary for stitches or even that one time he'd overextended his elbow trying to keep her from running away.

She remembers him singing softly to her in tone-deaf Dutch, feigning rest at the mess hall every morning as the nightmares began to keep them both from sleeping. She could never bring herself to think about why he was never so gentle with Greg, even when _their son_ had been a baby. What had been unending patience turned into indifference, a sort of benign -- at least on her part, less so on John's -- neglect. She could understand, really, why Greg came to prefer being ignored.

It meant he wasn't being hunted, scrutinized for the smallest possibility of being to blame. That she allowed it became something she never allowed herself to think about. She cooked their meals, did their laundry, all of it more or less the same. That Greg had to spend an occasional night in the yard for being a few minutes late to dinner was fine. He'd needed to learn there were consequences to one's actions.

Greg's words to her now made it clear he felt they'd made the wrong decision, but there hadn't really been a choice. John was a devout Catholic and generally opposed abortion, but he had made an exception for this case as he would for the rest of his life.

When Blythe had finished dressing again after the obstetrician they'd been lucky to find had told her that aborting the fetus would be impossible without putting her in grave danger -- the fetus had become ectopic after it never completed the journey to her womb, ruptured one of her fallopian tubes and had adhered to the wall of her spleen, which would have to come out with it the day she delivered -- even then, it couldn't be guaranteed she'd survive. The risk of infection was virtually omnipresent and she wouldn't have a spleen to help remove toxins from her body. She would almost certainly die either way but this 'urchin', or sometimes 'fucking evil little demon', 'parasitic little monster' as John called it when he chose to speak on the topic made it _slightly_ less likely to happen. The whole thing was an utter mockery but they carried through.

When Blythe asked why John had changed his mind, he'd narrowed his suddenly cold eyes down at her expanding midsection and told her it was different when it happened to you.

Then Greg came and gained new titles, being the bane of John's existence, the thief of spleens and killer of dreams. It was almost poetic if it wasn't so sick. After Greg was born, Blythe never went to church again. John continued to attend Mass and usually took Greg with him if only because he knew the small child would be forced to stay quiet for hours or face the consequences, which John made absolutely clear (the exemplary swats probably weren't conducive to anything but she didn't stop him anyway).

Such punishments were not necessary, they'd discovered, as Greg had stood and knelt, praying Latin John hadn't known he spoke in unison with everyone else, staring up at the ghostly, luridly depicted murals all around the church in silence. After Greg graduated high school and moved out to one of the colleges whose recruiters had been so desperate to snatch him up before anyone else (very early, an unexpected blessing) John himself stopped going to Mass. Blythe never asked why; she doesn't want to know.

_...I think maybe it's because, because you were never real to begin with...I just made you up to hurt myself and it worked, yes it did..._

There were two sides, maybe more, to John's handling of Greg. He was named after Blythe's favorite grandfather, whose eye color he'd shared. That it also matched Landry's was soundly disregarded.

Greg had been born prematurely, his unnaturally quiet entrance completely at odds with the turmoil he'd inspired beforehand. During those early days, John later told her, it had been almost easy to forget that he'd been a problem at all. It was much more difficult to despise the tiny, hairless ball of flesh underneath all those wires and tubing.

He could find moments to forget his hatred -- Gregory mistaking 'pilots' and 'pirates' for the same thing when he was two had actually been funny until he remembered that pirates had raped and plundered all the same and John was so angry he'd locked Gregory in the closet the next time he'd said it. Greg hates closets and refuses to use any, the same with garages and basements unless he can't avoid it.

Blythe tries to forget why and other memories take over, of anger out of nowhere that would swell and crest over her like a wave and John would somehow play lighthouse and guide her back to the shore of reason.

She remembers John's voice murmuring nonsense in her ear, his hold slowly increasing as she began to tire. She remembers the way he picked her up, carried her, lay down beside her and curled himself around her. He was trying to shield her, it seemed. She'd almost wished he could shield her from the...thing growing inside her, but he couldn't and simply tried his best. He would kiss her and smile and make her feel like a normal woman again and she could almost smile back. Eventually, the tears and the anger would go back to their cave in her heart and they could pretend everything was normal.

All her life has been, by and large, is one long improvisation act. She'll be glad when she can finally let the curtains close behind her.

_...Restless eyes close, maybe it'll go away...Please dress tomorrow, bring a satisfying day..._

She accidentally walked in on Gregory pulling pants on the morning they were due to return to Princeton. He didn't bother to yell but slammed the door, nearly catching her fingers and didn't apologize after he'd opened it again, pants now secure around his waist. The bottom hem of his t-shirt was bunched up in the back and she could see the hem of his boxer briefs just over his belt, but she was too afraid of what he would do if she told him to tuck his shirt in. Instead, she counted on something else to bring it to his attention but asked him to help her straighten the living room, but was tempted to take it back when he had to deliberate which hand to pick things up with, finally settling on using his socked feet to punt pillows into a position near the couch before picking them back up and knocking books around like shuffleboard pucks with the curved end of his cane.

When she narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, Greg looked back, unapologetic, and simply told her to be glad this one hadn't been poked around in a toilet yet. Then he seemed to think better of it and said that then again, it _had_ been used to shove various objects of Wilson's into a sewer, so maybe he might stop anyway.

He didn't though, stopping only when a flash of pain stole across his face as he bent to retrieve the remote control from under the table. He'd straightened and banged his fingers hard on the table but he wouldn't allow himself to wince again, it seemed, or do much else other than check for more bruising. It wasn't until she picked up the 24 DVD set that either of them spoke again.

Blythe blew out a breath and frowned down at the glossy cover before dropping it unceremoniously onto the couch beside Greg's hand where he sat trying to pretend he wasn't winded.

"If you had no intention to come here for whatever length of time, why would you order mail to come here? And if you moved Heaven and Hell not to see either of us when we visited, why would you suddenly pretend watching television here is anything you'd want to do?"

When her eyes alighted upon his face, Blythe was startled to see tears sliding down the planes under his already bloodshot, baggy eyes. Greg hadn't been winded, it seemed, but struggling not to cry.

"I'm tired," he said quietly, his body slung against the back of the couch like a discarded coat. Blythe's eyes slid shut as she noticed Greg's hands trembling even though he'd bunched them into fists.

He shuddered and his body began to wrench itself forward and his torso twisted to the side. "Every -- on-ne..." his voice began to slur and he bucked forward again, his head nearly coming in contact with the living room table as he tumbled to the floor and began to seize.

Blythe forgot her annoyance and dashed forward to crouch beside him, turning him on his side as the doctors at the hospital had asked her to do before she'd brought him home. They'd explained that he could choke on something he coughed up or swallowed as his muscles did whatever they damned well pleased. She recalls what other doctors had told her when he'd been a baby, all of it a jumble as Greg's head snapped back and impacted with the mercifully soft couch. His body stilled suddenly and his eyes fell shut. Blythe knelt down beside Greg and attempted to move him without disturbing his leg but he was far too heavy. There was nothing for it.

_...There are things that seem to pull us under and there are things that drag us down..._

House woke up in the passenger seat of his mother's car, his head falling forward and a moan issuing forth before he could stop it. It seemed that waking up in cars with other assholes driving was destined to be his lot in life. That he would consider his mother an asshole and what that meant didn't occur to him. Blythe didn't take her eyes off the road, but a glance in the mirror showed the backseat was empty.

"You d-didn't car -- r-ry me," he managed to slur, giving up then and letting his head roll back over to the passenger side door.

"I called Robert Henderson next door to help get you out to the car. You were out of commission so he loaded your bags up for me, too. I called Dr. Chase at your job after James gave it to me."

"You ca-alled _dear, pompous, assuming, hypocritical Wilsie again_," he burst out, panting with the effort of making his mouth do what he wanted. The fact that he was sore absolutely everywhere, including his teeth that he'd clenched hard at some point certainly didn't help matters. "Wh-why? Wh-what for?"

Blythe frowned at the derogatory nickname Greg had given James Wilson and the accusatory derision in his voice, gripping the wheel tighter rather than answering. She continued speaking as though he'd not said anything.

"He's going to meet us at the New Jersey Turnpike so we can take you home."

"Wilson?" Greg asked, his tone unchanged.

"Feel free not to talk until you can do it properly." Her own voice was crisp and sharp. That she meant more than his disrespectful tone was something she couldn't admit to. At least when Greg wasn't talking she didn't have to think about how much of a chore it seemed to be. "And I meant Dr. Chase. He's the one coming to get you."

After a few minutes she spoke again, "You said you were tired. Well, now I suppose you can rest."

When she finally looked over at him, he was staring out the window and tears were falling again. Blythe gripped the wheel harder and drove a bit faster. She didn't think she wanted to know what 'everyone' else got to do.

_...I'm fettered and abused, stand naked and accused...Should I surface, this one-man submarine? I only want the truth, so tonight we drink to youth...I'll never lose what I had as a boy..._

FIN


End file.
